New North Coast Trail section through Caithness ‘ready to walk’
The charity behind the John O’Groats Trail is already making strides with developing a new walking route in the far north.
The first section of the North Coast Trail through Caithness has now been completed, with plans to continue through to Cape Wrath as and when funding becomes available.
Laura Gray of the Association of Northern Trails – the charity behind both routes – said: “The North Coast Trail is really exciting at the moment – we feel like we have a bit of a trail now!
“Just in the last couple of weeks we got some walk reports and GPX files of the route onto Walk Highlands who have collated them onto a really nice part of the website so you can find them easily.
“So you can, in theory, walk from John O’Groats to Melvich now, which is about 60-odd miles worth of trail, obviously still in development. We are working away slowly at it, marking it as we go and hopefully infrastructure will be soon to follow to make it a bit more accessible.
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“We do look to the future to get it out towards Cape Wrath but obviously all these things are funding dependent. We’re very reliant on donations and seeking funding to allow these things to happen.
“I would be hopeful in the next couple of years we’ll extend it slowly but surely. Even if we could get it out to Tongue or Bettyhill as the next stage that would be fantastic.”
Her fellow trail manager Ken McElroy said: “It’s a daunting endeavour, but I think the far north can only reap the rewards of slow tourism projects like the John O’Groats Trail and the North Coast Trail.
“We’re only making light touches to the landscape – other than this very impressive bridge – but it benefits everybody in terms of input into the local economy but aside from that there’s a great deal of wellbeing can be wrought from going for a walk on the coast, especially on a day like this.
“It’s beautiful – we live in a beautiful place and I think that should be celebrated and it should be shared with as many people as possible, so we’d really encourage people to tackle both trails.”